Into No. 1, with the boatswain in charge and four seamen, went Olive and her husband and the cook; and into No. 2 crowded the carpenter, the two stewards, and the rest of the crew. For the captain was left the frail dinghy, slung from the stern. True to the tradition of the sea, he had refused a place in any of the lifeboats.
Lifeboat No. 2 got away first of the two. It was being tossed dizzily amongst the inky combers twenty yards distant, the men rowing feverishly to get clear of the yacht before she sank and sucked them under. But with No. 1 there was some hitch. The boatswain had unshackled the fall-ropes aft, and the boat slewed off with the jerk of a heavy wave.
"Clear away there forward, blast you!"
Two seamen were tugging at the fall-block. Something had fouled. The "Starlight" was rearing head stern up; her shattered bows were already under the waves; her life was now a matter of seconds only.
"Cut the ropes, you blasted idiots!"
Before the two men could get their knives through the tough rope, the "Starlight" reared like a bucking mare and plunged to her grave, dragging with her lifeboat No. 1 and its eight occupants.
"Jump for it!" yelled the boatswain.
Matheson, one foot caught under a seat, was dragged down and down until his heart hammered like a piston and his lungs were bursting with the fierce effort to hold his breath.
To the drowning man there comes a moment when he perforce gives up the fight and abandons himself to the blessed peace of unconsciousness, like a wanderer in a snowstorm lying down to rest. That moment had come to Matheson, when suddenly the half-severed rope that shackled the lifeboat to the doomed yacht gave way, and with a mutinous jerk the boat rushed itself to the surface, bottom upwards, flinging Matheson clear.
His craving lungs opened to the free air; he lay back on his cork-jacket gulping it in greedily as the whirlpool formed by the sinking yacht carried him round and round in dizzy circles.